Epitaph I. Das Kreuz in der Steppe [Epitaph I. The Cross in the Steppe] by Hans-Peter Türk, in Memory of a Lost Hope
Epitaph I. Das Kreuz in der Steppe [Epitaph I. The Cross in the Steppe] by Hans-Peter Türk, in Memory of a Lost Hope

Summary/Abstract: The following study was prompted by the late-2022 song cycle commemorating the tens of thousands of ethnic Germans (Swabians from Banat and Transylvanian Saxons) from Romania who were deported to Russia after World War II for so-called “labour work”. Hans-Peter Türk’s Das Kreuz in der Steppe, on lyrics by Rudi Gross, is the opening piece in the vocal cycle Epitaph, in which the composer sets literary texts written by people deported to Russia to music. This study presents brief data on the creative context of the Epitaph cycle and the reception of the premiere. The introduction of the study is completed by a short biographical portrait of the composer Hans-Peter Türk and his spiritual anchoring in the Transylvanian Saxon cultural environment. The analytical part of the study dwells on two aspects relevant to Türk’s creation, which are also reflected in this mature opus: cyclical thinking and proportions based on symmetry.

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